Gustave M. Gilbert

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Gustave Mark Gilbert (born September 30, 1911 in New York City , † February 6, 1977 in Manhasset , New York ) gained international fame as an American prison psychologist at the Nuremberg trial of the major Nazi war criminals .

Life

Gustave M. Gilbert was born in New York to Austro-Jewish immigrants. In 1939 he received his PhD in psychology from Columbia University . During the Second World War he was employed with the rank of first lieutenant as an employee of the intelligence service of the US Army in Europe.

Due to his knowledge of German, he was appointed to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a translator and prison psychologist from 1945 to 1946, now with the rank of captain, together with Douglas M. Kelley and others . There he examined the defendants in the first major war crimes trial and was able to hold detailed discussions with Nazi officials such as Hermann Göring , Joachim von Ribbentrop , Wilhelm Keitel , Hans Frank , Rudolf Hess and Ernst Kaltenbrunner . After some time, Gilbert revealed himself to his interlocutors as a Jew, which apparently did not impress the interviewees. Gilbert reported on his encounters with the accused Nazi figures in his Nuremberg diary in 1947 , which was read worldwide.

1954 Gilbert was Associate Professor at Michigan State College, 1961 head of the Psychological Institute at Long Island University in Brooklyn , New York. At the 5th Inter-American Psychology Congress in 1957 in Mexico City he was elected President-elect (next President).

On May 29, 1961, as an expert in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem , he reported how, in particular, Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss had described Adolf Eichmann's central role in the final solution to the Jewish question . Whenever Höss had moral doubts about the “final solution”, Eichmann was able to dispel them.

The character of Gustave M. Gilbert appears in various films about the Nuremberg Trial, among others in 2000 in a Canadian-US American and in 2006 in two British TV productions, in 2005 in the German TV production Speer and Er (Director: Heinrich Breloer ).

Gustave M. Gilbert used the projective psychological test method Rorschach test on the defendants in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals . Later, based on their interpretation of the Rorschach tests, Miale and Selzer (1975, 287) took the view that the “Nazis were not psychologically normal or healthy” people: “Here it seems to be generally about individuals who are undeveloped, manipulable and in their relationships are hostile to others. ”Another commission of inquiry, consisting of 15 Rorschach experts, found no consistent personality differences between the answers of the Nazis and those of the comparators (Zimbardo, 1983).

Fonts

  • The Nuremberg Diary , Farrar, Straus & Co, New York 1947
    • in German: Nuremberg Diary. Conversations between the accused and the forensic psychologist. Series: The time of National Socialism. Transl. Margaret Carroux, Karin Krausskopf & Lis Leonard. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 1962, ISBN 3-436-02477-5
  • Hermann Goering: Amiable Psychopath , in: Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , Vol. 43, 1948, pp. 211 ff.
  • The Psychology of Dictatorship; Based on an examination of the leaders of Nazi Germany , The Ronald Press Company, New York 1950.
  • Stereotype persistence and change among college students , in: Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , Jg. 46, 1951, pp. 245 ff.
  • Florence R. Miale & Michael Selzer: The Nuremberg mind: the psychology of the Nazi leaders , with an introduction and Rorschach records by Gustave M. Gilbert, Quadrangle / The New York Times Book Co., New York 1975, ISBN 0812905814 .
  • Philip G. Zimbardo: Psychology. Springer, Berlin, 4th revised. 1983 edition; 18th update Edition 2008 ISBN 3827372755 .

Web links

Commons : Gustave Gilbert  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Film recording of Gilbert's testimony
  2. ↑ engl. Version can be read and searched online in German internet bookshops
  3. ↑ 15th edition November 2014
personal data
SURNAME Gilbert, Gustave M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gilbert, Gustave Mark (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist, professor of psychology
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1977
Place of death Manhasset , New York